The Story Behind the Photo

For years now I’ve had this trustworthy Nikon camera. A D5200 for any of you familiar. And for years it’s accompanied me just about everywhere you could imagine, capturing moments both big and small and painting beautiful stories of moments I never would have remembered if not for those moments captured at an infinitesimal moment in time.

In finally having some stability over the past year, I’ve had a chance to sort through the thousands of photos I’ve snapped over the past six years, reliving all of the trips, moments, and people I’ve met along the way.

The one thing I loved most about Instagram, when I was still on it, was the empowerment it gave me to share photos of my adventures with all of my “followers.” But it seemed that no matter what beautiful place I’d traveled to or the incredible moment I’d captured, I never felt I was able to share the true story behind the photo. I found myself curtailing what photos I posted and the subsequent caption for the photo, often opting for the short and witty caption as a way of getting more likes, rather than sharing the true, full, and often longer-winded story behind the photo.

Because it’s never just the photo that you remember. It’s the context of the photo. How you were feeling when you took it, the moment itself, captured with a slight press of a button and forever archived and at your fingers to relive. I have stories I want to tell, some of which I hope to share with you in small portions as time goes on.

Enjoy the weird amalgamation of photos from moments both big and small.

- Riley

July 13, 2017

Washington, D.C.

Much like every new nurse must endure, the first few years of my career were spent on night shift, grinding away from 7PM until much of the world was waking up the next morning.

The constant switching of my sleep schedule made for many a restless night on those nights I was off.

I had woken up around three in the morning the day this photo was taken. After a while of trying to feign sleep, I eventually relented and threw my running shoes on and took off for a run down the Mall.

Living on the Hill at the time, I ran the familiar route my feet had taken so many times before. East Capitol Street to the Capitol Building. The Capitol Building past the Smithsonians. Follow the path arcing itself around the Washington monument, and trace the reflecting pool to my halfway point of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The morning I ran that path was a little different from past runs, having unwittingly timed my run to land me at my rest spot at the foot of Abe Lincoln just as the sun had begun to rise behind the city, silhouetting the monuments and igniting a fire in the sky in front of me.

I stayed long enough to enjoy before taking off again for home, trying to beat the sun home.

March 28, 2019

Valparaiso, Chile

The best parts of my trips abroad weren’t the big cities or tourist attractions, but were often the small, less-traveled towns and experiences recommended only by those you would call “locals.”

When I visited Chile in 2019, I landed in Santiago without a clear plan of what my trip to the country had in store. I had given myself five days to explore the country, with plans to spend another five in Argentina. I had originally thought of splitting my time between Santiago and the Atacama desert in the north, one of the largest deserts in the world. As the trip went on and it being summer in the southern hemisphere at the time, the thought of even greater desert heat lost its appeal. Instead I opted for a trip to a seaside town called Valparaiso, about a two-hour drive from Santiago.

At the time it surprised me that a beach town could actually be quite chilly and breezy, even in the height of summer. Valparaiso was nestled right on the coast of the Pacific and was also on the lower end of the South America, its neighbor Antarctica just a few thousand miles away. Thoughts of going to the beach went by the wayside, opting instead to walk through the many alleys and parts of town well known for their murals and street art. I found myself lost in various neighborhoods, houses painted with fantastic murals and quirky art, art speckled on the streets I walked.

I passed a bar on my way back to my hostel the last night in the city, pictured above. I actually laughed out loud when I read the sign out front, which promised “beer as cold as your Ex partner heart.” I had gone through a breakup just prior to my leaving for the trip, one that had left a mildly bad taste in my mouth. A bar promising cold beer while also making thinly veiled swipes at your ex was exactly the sort of bar that sounded like my kind of place. If memory serves me right, I had a few beers. And if I remember correctly, they were just as cold.

July 23, 2020

Middle of nowhere Iowa

This was taken just after the pandemic had begun and at a time I had decided that what my life needed most was a puppy.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

I picked Maya up from a nice family in northern Iowa on my way out to Colorado where we’d eventually spend the next year traveling through on various nursing assignments. Putting her in a crate I’d seat-belted into the passenger seat, we definitely looked like a clown car with my backseat and trunk already packed to the gills with all my belongings. In the time between starting the car, driving it down the driveway, and pointing our wheels west toward Denver, I remember looking at Maya, already asleep in her crate, and wondering what on Earth I had just done.

A little later on, my own panic subsided, Maya woke up and began her own “who are you, where am I, and where are you taking me” freak-out. Keeping her in her crate became an increasingly perilous struggle at interstate speeds of seventy miles per hour, so I resigned myself to letting a twelve-week old puppy use the cabin as a climbing gym.

If you’re imagining what was likely sheer chaos in doing this, you are correct.

Eventually she tired out, settling into my lap and wedging herself between my thigh and the door, captured above.

My adventure through life with her thus far has been just as eventful as that first car ride together. And for that, I couldn’t be more thankful.